1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and an image processing method especially preferably applicable upon generation of an image on image capture conditions changed based on images captured from multiple view points.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a method of generating an image, based on images acquired by capturing an object from multiple view points, with arbitrary focal distance, depth of field and view point, is known.
For example, Bennett Wilburn, Neel Joshi, Vaibhav Vaish, Eino-Ville Talvala, Emilio Antunez, Adam Barth, Andrew Adams, Marc Levoy and Mark Horowitz, disclose in “High Performance Imaging Using Large Camera Arrays”, the United States, Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 2005, pages 765 to 776, a technique of acquiring plural images from different view points (hereinbelow, such multiple view points images will be referred to as an “image group”) with plural cameras arranged in a grid pattern on a two-dimensional plane. Further, according to this technique, focus adjustment is performed by providing a view point, a focal distance and an aperture diameter as parameters, and an image (hereinbelow, an image generated with adjusted focus based on given parameters will be referred to as a “completed image”) is generated from these image group by computation processing. Accordingly, it is possible to generate various completed images in accordance with parameter settings by a user.